Chicken research success

by
5m Editor

8 June 2005, at 12:00am

AUSTRALIA - Researchers at the University of New England claim they have undertaken new research with the potential to save Australian producers millions of dollars.
Most of the one million chickens that Australians eat every day are vaccinated against the virulent Marek&#39;s disease virus.
But this &quot;blanket&quot; vaccination strategy could be about to change.
UNE research has paved the way for &quot;tactical&quot; rather than &quot;blanket&quot; vaccination against the disease, a development that could save Australian producers millions of dollars a year in vaccination costs.
The research team, led by UNE&#39;s Associate Professor Steve Walkden-Brown, has developed a simple and inexpensive test that can detect the presence of Marek&#39;s disease virus in a poultry farmer&#39;s shed, identify the strain, and indicate the severity of the problem by measuring the number of copies of the virus in the sample.
The beauty of the test is that it can do all this simply by analysing a sample of dust from the shed. The ability of the test to quantify the presence of the virus in poultry shed dust is the researchers&#39; most recent achievement and, according to Dr Walkden-Brown, most groundbreaking achievement.
<i>Source: TheNorthDailyLeader</i>